Increasing Attendance at Nigeria Professional Football League Games - A White paper By Benson Chukwueke, A Sport Marketing Consultant in Nigeria

 

Executive Summary

Introduction

The irony of Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) playing in a football crazy country like Nigeria with over a 100 million active fans,  but only able to attract an average between 3000 and 5000 stadium attendance, give reasons for scrutiny. Especially, when

Purpose and Scope

To improve the commercial value of Npfl by recommending possible ways of increasing fans interest, following, viewership and attendance of Npfl games.  To briefly discuss on how media broadcast and publications correlate with fans interest and actions. 

The scope of this paper is to consider factors affecting fans attendance to Npfl games, ways to encourage interest and actions of fans,  to consider loyalty scheme and rewards as a way to motivate recanstrant fans to start attending Npfl games once again. 

On the Premise that:

1. Footballers perform better with fans cheering them up

2. Clubs make more revenue by fans Attendance

3. Club attract Sponsorship with large consistent fans following and attendance to their games

Situation Analysis

The state of Npfl as at the time of writing this paper:

1. Fans attendance has further gone down in Npfl games with government restrictions:  "playing under close door" policy

2. Quality of Npfl games are far lower than competition Premier League on Cable TV.

3. Npfl lack stars due to mass transfer of outstanding players to clubs abroad.

4. Poor media reporting and hyping of  Npfl games as against competition - PL games.

5. Low fans interest, wouldn't even subscribe nor view for free Npfl tv Streaming online

Recommendations

1 Engagement of Fans to Increase Interest for Npfl Games

# LMC constant advertisement and Promotion of Npfl matches

# 1 Year Free Trials on Redstrike NPFL TV to encourage viewership of Npfl games. Reward fans for viewing live streaming online. 

# Encourage media to broadcast and publish Npfl games, highlights and scores as headline news

# Encourage clubs to engage their global fans on social media: YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat... 

2. Improve Quality of Npfl Games

# Aggressive push to improve quality and image of Npfl through Elite Players Project

# Improve refereeing and introduction of VAR

# Improve stadium security and curb home team hooliganism/ bribery

3. Consider Fans Loyalty and Frequent Attendance Reward Scheme: 

# A loyalty program organized by LMC or Npfl clubs to reward fans for frequent attendance and for behaviors that need to be encouraged: Give access to insiders information, fans fest, visit to clubhouse, freebies and discounted menchandize etc. 

Assumptions

My recommendations are based on assumption that the reasons for fans low attendance in Npfl games are similar to the case of the Chinese Super League and the Belgium Jupiter league ten years ago. So as the recapitalization of their league, massive media promotion, Elite players and coaches project, fans loyalty program has greatly increased fans attendance by over 300%; with television rights, sponsorship value skyrocketing.